NEWS OF THE WEEK
THE nature of the conversations Hitler had-with Ciano and Laval (Mussolini being inexplicably absent) last week-end can be only surmised. But about the rival desires entertained by the participants there can be little doubt. Hitler wants troops from France to fight, or, at any rate, guard communications (which is much the same thing in the land of the guerillas) in Russia. Ciano wants a watertight guarantee of the permanent retention or acquisi- tion of Nice and Corsica, and, in his visionary moods, of Tunis. Laval wants to move the Vichy government to Paris, to avoid sub- jection to Dear and Doriot, to withhold every square inch of French soil from Italy, and to evade so far as possible the further burdens Hitler means to lay on France. The conference must have broken up with some aspirations at least unsatisfied. Laval could never" assent to the alienation of French territory to Italy, and it is hard to see how he could give any firm assurance of troops to Hitler. If Frenchmen were not ready to go and work in German factories not one in ten thousand of them will be ready to go to fight for Germany in Russia. They can—perhaps—be compelled, but it is doubtful what form compulsion would take, or by whom it would be exerted. France is more solidly anti-German than ever, for the occupation of Vichy France by Germany has, by the contacts it has created, raised that area to the pitch of hatred of everything Nazi that has long animated the original occupied area. The idea of marching through France and Spain has no doubt crossed Hitler's mind, and may be occupying it still, but knowledge of the possi- bilities of resistance and sabotage by the French, and the powerless- ness of Laval and Petain to avert that, is calculated to exert a severely chastening influence.
